CalcuQ uote have become estab- lished as one of the leading supply chain innovators with their ability to source and price
components in real-time. Leveraging their considerable experience in this area, Chintain Sutaria tells Trevor Galbraith about the latest new platform, which addresses excess inventories and helps companies free-up or source much- needed component stocks.
Welcome Chintan. Now you’ve come out with a really exciting new platform. At the moment, one of the big issues in the industry is the supply chain shocks.
And what’s happened is a lot of contract manufacturers and OEMs have purchased
how are we going to do this in a way that’s fair and it’s going to support all of your businesses? And the feedback we got was, they said, “we have the information that you’re asking for about date codes and traceability and all of that stuff. It’s just a matter of cataloging it”.
So what they mutually agreed on across the hundred or so companies that partic- ipated in these was to say, when you want the part, tell me, and I will provide all the details about the part, but I don’t have that in a structured data set to be able to
provide, and it doesn’t make sense to waste time when we’re already busy looking for all these parts. So that was the solution, was to say, let’s just make sure that we have that information available so we can provide
it before you commit to buying them. But we’re talking directly between the seller and the buyer. We don’t need a third party to intervene and translate that communication for us and slow the process down.
a lot of excess inventory and they’re sitting
there on a lot of money that’s tied up in stock and it’s starting to hurt the bottom line, but you’ve come up with a solution for that. So, tell us a little bit about it.
Yes. So StockCQ basically originated from this idea that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. So we came up with the idea because we had EMS companies coming to us saying, “I really am desperate to find these parts. They’re
not available in the primary sources that I usually go to. I’m having to go to aftermar- ket situations and it turns out I find out later that it was my neighbor that had the parts.” And so we said, “Well, why don’t we help connect you guys?” So we did some study, we looked at the data we had, and
it turns out that in about one third of the cases, 30% of cases, we were finding that there was an overlap between Company A having excess material that Company B was short on. So we said, “Well, let’s just create a network where you guys can directly talk to each other without having a third party involved.” And that’s what we did.
And StockCQ, named because it’s a vir- tual stock room that anybody can access, and it’s a closed community. It’s exclusive to EMS and OEM companies. So it’s people that have parts and use parts. And what it allows them to do is upload all of their excess materials and then search it to see who else has the parts that I need. And when they find a part that they need, they click a button and it introduces the seller and the buyer together and they work it out from there.
And so is this something that’s open to CalcuQuote customers or is it open to anybody?
It’s open to anybody. Anybody that’s an OEM and EMS company, it’s open to.
Okay. And what sort of information do you ask for? I mean, how many parts have you got? What value are they and what about the condition and aging of them?
Yeah, so there’s basically, we held round tables. So we had more than a hundred EMS company executives attend these virtual round tables we did to explore these types of topics because we said, if you guys are all going to work together,
So it’s really essentially just a free service that you’re providing because you’re not handling any money. There’s no transaction involved. You’re just introducing the buyers to the seller.
Yes, today it’s a completely free service. Anybody that is an OEM or EMS company can use it. We do eventually plan to figure out a way to basically make it not a loss leader for us. Right. We don’t want to lose money on it. And again, we’ve had those open conversations to come up with a fair way. We don’t want to become a broker, we don’t want to handle parts, we don’t want to do any of that stuff. Our primary business is still quoting and purchasing software that helps EMS companies be successful. But this is a way for us to solve one of the big-
gest problems that our customers are facing.
Yeah, it’s huge. It’s absolutely huge. And it’s a critical problem in the industry right now. So congratulations in coming up with it and I wish you absolutely every success with it, Chintan.
Thank you very much.
–TREVOR GALBRAITH
